And surely Jasmine was loud! She is of the “Hello Kitty” generation and these girls are loud. Their blather into mobiles has the clip and volume of cartoon characters. When she sang, Jasmine was a cartoon of the Westerners that are her role models, including the American Idol whose “I’ll Take My Flight” Jasmine performed as if its independent-minded lyrics could come from her. For twelve weeks, Jasmine was allowed to advance. But then Ken’s demeanor suggested it was high time for this to stop. He said, “Jasmine, I wonder — is it possible for you to be yourself instead of someone else?”
What a moment that was. Our judges were always pushing us to be “real.” To have “feeling.” And yet, this advice was not sincere. What got rewarded was pretense, smooth and seamless as good karaoke. Paul had felt deeply, and Paul was gone. I also knew that Ken was unfair to Jasmine, whose songs were as truly-felt as any we sang. “I’ll search my heart and I’ll learn how to fly,” she’d sing, and one might feel the chill of conviction. Then, with “I stretch my wings and soon I’ll touch the sky,” the authenticity would lapse and the lyrics ring false. Should she instead have sung a weak song, about giving up? Joachim had done so — and sealed his fate thereby.
Ken said of her last performance, “Jasmine, you sang tonight like a person who has left already,” which was a cruel play on the title of the song, “Leaving You Now” about a girl leaving a bad relationship. Briefly I felt angry on her behalf, and protective, as I would protect my own little sister. After all, who was Ken to make fun of her? Why should any of us make fun — since we were all uncertain, and striving as best we could? “Anyhow, you were the last girl left standing,” Pauline comforted her, causing Jasmine to smile through tears that made unattractive black tracks from the corners of her eyes. Hady and I gathered ourselves and clucked with the unison we’d developed in making sure never to be upstaged in gestures either of sympathy or thanks. The MC put the mic to my lips. My voice shook when I said, “Thank you from the bottom of my heart.” Hady’s voice also contained vibrato as he said, “From the bottom of my heart — thank you all so very much.” From points equidistant on the MC’s either side, we eyed each other. The contest had come down to him and me. Even with my Chinese understanding of the half-random nature of good fortune, I think I felt my fate was drawing toward a place where I could determine it. Hady felt the same.
During the week before the Final Showdown, Hady and I shared precious moments of camaraderie. Like mischievous schoolboys, we’d sneak out of our hotel rooms to laugh and caper on the Esplanade. Sleepy security guards were none the wiser! Down by the Riverwalk is a sculpture by Salvador Dali. It is a man who dances and stretches wide his arms, but in the place where his heart should be is an empty hole. Disgruntled Singaporeans say this sculpture represents our nation: heartless and soulless, afraid and cowed. But Hady was ebullient. One night he leaped up beside the sculpture and stretched his own arms wide. “I’ll put a heart there, Jonathan. See if it don’t!” he proclaimed, eliciting cheers from vendors at the nearby hawker center. I admired my friend. Hady is small, but there is elastic in his step. Fever ignited his boyish smile that night. I am his elder, and am thought much handsomer — striking and soulful. That night, I admitted him my equal.
“Either one of us, my friend. Let the best man win!” I exclaimed, and we hugged, pounding each other’s backs.
We were fools.
The last two days saw us sequestered with our coaches and stylists. I missed Hady. I gave frequent thought to him! But I knew the time had come to be alone. I put final touches on my image and my act. Publicity stills showed me brooding and stark, Kabuki-esque in the manner that suits my north China look so well. An open-throated shirt and narrow, dark trousers replaced my tuxedo. I was Frank Sinatra, updated. I wore this image like a second skin.
In my smug heart I suspected Hady was not doing as well. He had an Achilles’ heel that I did not. His religion occasioned his vulnerability, which was sexuality.
Though bright and sonorous as a bell, Hady’s mode had been largely bubblegum. “This song is sexy, Hady: sex-y!” Pauline remarked, of “I’m Your Tomcat, Baby” and in truth he’d performed it very bouncy, fun — very G-rated. “I keep it clean for the kids,” he replied, and I know he meant it truly. But I also knew his qualms went deeper. His female fans all wore the scarf that Singapore Muslims call a tudong, and if anything negates whatever sex feelings a man tries to have toward a woman, it’s a veil on her head! I asked Hady about this on our last, evening jaunt, and he looked troubled. His charming smile didn’t reach his light-brown eyes. “Jon, my life can feel like — I don’t know — like serving two gods. You know? Sometimes it just feels wrong. Other times — not so much.” His eyes glistened with tears! His look made me feel very strange. It was sad. Regretful. Also — pitying? I dispelled the odd moment with a joke.
“Too bad you’re not Hindu, man,” I said, and he laughed.
Minister Mentor really is too old for his job. It was he who asked Ken to compose a Final Showdown song for us.
“You Hear My Voice” is extremely beautiful. One after the other, we would do our best with it. Within an hour, votes would be tallied. The coin toss favored me.
“Your smile is sun in the darkness,” I began. Staging was such that the spot on me came up only at the end of this line. The audience of twelve thousand stirred like an animal being roused. “You hear my voice when I call. . . ”
Cheers broke out, streaks of sound like rockets. Cameras and cell phones glittered as if a galaxy were materializing. “You lift me high — touching the sky —”
I was thinking of them, my fellow Singaporeans, like a sea beginning to heave. But, in order to sound as authentic as possible, I’d also trained myself to think about a girl. Some ravishing creature such as fellows dream of. Pavithra, maybe, or Audrey Hepburn. Me, I imagined myself the young romantic, elegantly obsessed. Like Johnny Depp, but virile.
“Together, we fly—”
Oh, what a feeling. I swept my hand as if gathering the crowd, all the loveliness, and squeezing it into a ball. I jerked my fist to my heart. Screams erupted. I smiled and nodded, as if urging a lover. Closing my eyes, I planted my feet apart and made an “X” of myself, as my stylist had tutored me. I tossed my hand up as if tossing confetti or a fistful of flowers.
Well, the verses are somewhat sad at first, then get happier. “You found me deep in the dust,” and “You knew how much I was struggling” — that kind of thing. But the staging offset the sad lyrics. In perfect timing a choir of girl singers (we’d not been allowed back-up until now) rose to stage level via hydraulic lift, bringing with them a cloud of dry ice. They began their dance and I, casting about the stage with sad and stalking step, got happier as the verses did. “Your sweetness poured, like libation.” This was an odd, over-intellectual (I thought) line, but I swept my hand from forehead to breast, then down and away to personalize the moment.
This was the turning point. With the same “X” move that my stylist predicted would be my trademark, I met the climax. The scream of response was like hot wind.
I truly was “ecstatic.” When I threw my head back and pulled at the collar of my white shirt as if I had to break it to breathe, the moment was not manufactured. It was a real, Tom Jones moment. I put both hands to the mic and held it low as Joachim had, jerking my head so a curtain of hair fell forward, which I peered through like vines. Feeling the brash ease of the Hello Kitty generation rise in my breast, I was tempted to shriek but did not. Instead I grasped the moment and made it my own, Asian and masculine. Lights sank to blackness, and it was over.
About Elizabeth Sachs
